ABWW Philosophical Moment of the Day

This is Independence Day and I want to declare my right to feel as I do about the state of black love for as long as I need. A community does not loose over 20% of it’s married couples in less than 30 years without suffering some trauma, so I claim the right to do as I need to to heal our wounds as a community and as an individual. As this blog continues to grow, I will throw out some of my theories on why the love between black men and women have gotten to a tipping point where potentially more black women will be single than married and even more men out-marry at substantial higher rates than black women do.

I am even more sure that black woman have a right to be angry, sad, frustrated, satisfied or deliriously happy with the lives they lead. We also need to mourn and spit fire and mourn the loss of so many black men, who have turned their anger towards those who give them life, support them and have gone without for them. This is painful stuff and we should have the right to go through all the stages of loss and come out the other end with love and acceptance for ourselves and those who truly love us.

What will be next of this journey that started in the 15th century when the first white sailor projected his most deviant fantasies on African women? We have survived through slavery, Jim Crow, the cult of ideal white womanhood, paramour rights, the legalization of interracial marriage, industrialization, the school to jail pipeline and the changes brought on the modern woman’s movement, the pill and the drug and thug epidemic. I think it our right to feel our pain, frustration and isolation come out the other end. Come out to what? I don’t know, I am in the dark just like you are, but it is a little easier knowing that you are out there with me.